sherriknits

Monday means occupational therapy a few times a month and that happened to be what it was today.

Rebecca, Rhianna, Miss Mayah, Tyler and I took off this morning for a fun day. Of course, to Tyler…this means lunch at Red Robin. We could never eat so high-classed when the other kids were growing up so the girls love getting to go there now. (and poor Ben feels left out!) Rebecca and I always split a bacon-cheeseburger. Tyler really loves getting pizza and fries…what a combination!

Anyway, my big mission today was to get a new water bottle. I am the worst when it comes to drinking water. The worst. My friend, Marlene, and I always have this big joke that if we get a nice bottle, maybe we’ll drink more. Does it work? For a day or two at least. lol Anyway, I did some research the evening the last time I went to Olympia for therapy and decided I wanted to get a stainless bottle and they happen to be carried at a store in downtown Olympia so I’ve been eagerly waiting for the next therapy day.

Terrible picture but I like the bottle. We’ll see how it works. Ask me once in awhile. Please.

Oh! I have knitting to show before I show Tyler’s therapy pictures.

I’ll let you know later what it is…but at least we’re making progress!!!

Today in therapy we worked on those old abs!

He was exhausted when we left there….it’s hard work for him, but he didn’t give up or mumble and groan too much. Good boy!

This week is the fundraiser for the tv station Kenny works at so we stopped by to see him for a few minutes and there were some men doing a soundcheck so Tyler had to go watch.

It’s gonna be a long week………….

Tags: my life

Thanks, Shanda! I love that she is blogging again these days, I love visiting her for a bright spot in my day.  Thanks to Susan, too!

Rules – List 7 things I love, and award 7 Blogs I love.

7 things I love: (in no order)

• my family
• knitting
• blogging
• facebook
• date night with Kenny
• anywhere in the RV
• my MacBook
• 
   
  • • • lol how do i get out of this?
      • I am going to leave this like this because it’s funny.
    • Ok…now I got it to back up a little bit but can’t get out of the formatting…it’s making me laugh.
    • 
      
    • And who do I tag? (in no order, of course)
    • Rebecca
    • Rhianna
    • Laura
    • Mary
    • Marlene
    • Brittany
    • Nancy
    • I tried to pick different people this time, only because I thought it would be nice.
    • And now, how do I get out of this formatting????? lol

Tags: my life

I’ve been knitting but I can’t show. When I finish my current project, I need to make my brother a hat for his probable brain surgery. It will be good to have something to keep me busy. I have the yarn and I think I found a pattern today for that. ugh.

The other day we had our annual eye exam. I am not thrilled to say that I did end up with a small scar and it is permanent. When I get my new glasses I will find out how it will affect me. My depth perception is still off a little and this makes me sad, almost crazy, but I do hear that your brain will adjust to the change so I’m planning on that.

When we go to the eye doctor, we always get our 3 appointments together. Poor Tyler. When he did the peripheral vision test, he didn’t understand what he was supposed to be doing. You click when you see a flash of light. He got a few, but he really didn’t get it. I get stressed out trying to do it so I felt for him.

I forgot my camera but I did get a few cell phone shots of Tyler.

Like those glasses? They come with clip on sunglasses.

How about those? We loved the pose.

Actually, I am going to see what they can do about getting these glasses that are designed just for children with Down Syndrome…to accomodate the things like the bridge of his nose. All in all, it was a successful visit.

We were supposed to get to double-date tonight but our friends were up all night with the flu compliments of their grandbaby who had it earlier this week. Nice.

Hope to have knitting to show soon!

Oh, and loved seeing the snow in the rain today. lol

Tags: my life

Gosh, I just haven’t been here, have I?

All is well, I think life has been a little uneventful, but this is good, right?

I’ve been buried in trying to get my yarn mess cleaned up, what a disaster. How does all this stuff make it’s way in to my house, anyway? I can’t figure it out. I really need a room for all this lovely mess. I’m not the most organized person and tend to make a mess out of any organization I manage to accomplish …. ugh.

I guess I shouldn’t say life has been uneventful. Last week we had two huge events with my brothers. One of them has MS and it’s been so difficult watching him go through what he’s gone through. Now we find out he may need brain surgery (very likely) for a condition called chiari malformation. At first, he was devastated, now I think he is beginning to feel hope that it would help with some of the symptoms he’s been struggling with. I hurt over seeing him suffer. We would surely appreciate all prayers. He goes for a 2nd opinion on April 1 and if that confirms the first doctor’s opinion, then surgery will be soon after. Amazingly, now they are going to check his daughter for the same thing. She’s a young mom.

The other big event is that my other brother got married Saturday. I have a great new sister-in-law and look forward to having her part of the family!

I have had 2 run-ins with our cat.

Don’t let her apparent cuteness fool you.

The other night, I was almost asleep and I stuck my leg out of the covers. Instant major, major pain! I started screaming and poor Kenny, who was sound asleep was jolted awake and yelling, “”do you have a charlie horse? what’s wrong?” I was so shocked and hurt so bad I couldn’t answer. She sliced my toe with her claw (I assume, maybe she bit me…I don’t know!” Then it gets funny. Kenny got up and grabbed her, she was instantly growling at him. Skip to Ben. He is asleep and suddenly wakes up….he thinks, “Did I just hear someone screaming?” “Hmmm, maybe not.” Then he hears the cat hissing and Kenny stomping by in the hall and down the stairs, opening the back door and slamming it. “Hmm, yep. I think I heard screaming!” lol

At 3:30, Kenny managed to fall back to sleep after watching tv for awhile. I laid there wide awake and finally moved to the couch where I fell asleep around 4:30 with a throbbing toe.

Two nights later. We are home from the wedding and very tired. Kenny and Ben go to bed, I plan to follow in just a minute. Suddenly the door handle starts moving. I dash upstairs, “Kenny! Someone is trying to open the door!” He races down stairs and Ben hears this and opens his door so the dog can come down stairs. Kenny looks out the door and sees no one. He opens it and in trots the cat. “Cat Burglar!” Ben laughs. Kenny gave me a big hug of reassurance and heads back to bed. I sit down with a pounding heart and try to relax so I can go to sleep. No more of this, missy, or you may be heading off to Rebecca’s house where you belong.

Oh! I had an incredible surprise the other day. I was leaving for work and see this package in the mail for me. Imagine my surprise when I find this inside!

Here’s a closeup of the shawl pin….

I took part in the International Scarf exchange. I did get a beautiful scarf from England that I have worn many times. The rest of my experience was less than wonderful. I spent over half the swap trying to get ahold of the person who I was to knit for. Finally I was reassigned a new swap partner which meant finding new yarn and pattern. There were just unfortunately many mixups along the way so the swap organizer wanted to make it up to me and assigned me an angel. This was not necessary, but wow am I thrilled she did! The shawl is out of Kauni lace yarn and it is beautiful!

Ok….time for bed….hope life is treating all of you well!

Tags: my life

Ok, this was not what I expected to wake up to.

It was gone by late morning, but while I had heard we’d have snow mixed with rain….this was a surprise. This afternoon, we’ve had some pretty strong winds and hail. At one point this afternoon, everything was swirling like crazy. Been interesting.

I tried to get a good picture for Nancy of the first time I saw little missy in the sweater she knit her but I couldn’t get a good one for anything.

You can still tell how cute it is.

I’ve been knitting but no pictures. I got some really cool fabric but forgot to take pictures of that, too. Maybe Rebecca will indulge me and send me one. She’s going to make me 2 purses as soon as I buy her all the rest of the stuff that she needs besides the fabric.

Tomorrow I get my hair cut and highlighted….yea!

Tags: my life

There isn’t a lot to blog about but I’ve been gone a long time again so I thought I’d better check in.

The other day I was fixing my hair and I looked over and could not believe what I saw.

Hmmmmm……I wonder if it would have helped if I’d seen this before?

We had snow again earlier this week! I know, I know…for those of you in other parts of the country, this is nothing but I can’t even count how many times we’ve had snow this year and we can go years without even seeing it fall from the sky!

We had therapy on Monday and the drive was really pretty.

This time we had a full car. I had a great day and I’m hoping everyone else did, too!

I never could get them all to look at the camera at the same time.

It’s so cute now that little missy is eating solid food….she loves it!

Therapy is in a new place now, actually quite a bit closer for us. We spend a little bit of time at Barnes and Noble, which helps a lot to get Tyler on board. He tends to zone out in the car and both times we’ve gone to our new place, we’ve gone there to hang out of a little bit first. It just helps to get him walking around and looking at books before we go.

This time, he and the girls sat at a table by the window and he played with his calculator for awhile.

It works out great….there were dried beans all over the floor from the previous client, so Tyler vacuumed it all up as part of his session. He loves it. About 5 years ago, all he wanted for Christmas was a vacuum cleaner…which no, he doesn’t really get thrilled over any more…but he does like to help his therapist. Then they had to go find out where the breaker panel was because she’d blown a breaker earlier. He was quite the man that day!

We spent the rest of the day fabric shopping. Rebecca is going to make me a bag and I’m excited to see what she comes up with! Of course I forgot to take any pictures of that fun stuff!

The rest of the week has been even more uneventful. I’ll check back in when there is something exciting to say or else I’ll just let you know I’m still alive. lol

Tags: my life

Tyler had “WordAlive” last nightt at church so we dropped him off and left him in Rhianna’s care and headed out of town with a gift certificate Kenny got from Rebecca and Chase.

Terrible picture. Unfortunately, I forgot about my camera most of the night.

This little place has had a lot of meaning to me over the last year. Remember the terrible storm we had last December? Well, we got the wind but towards Olympia, they got flooding. This little restaurant was hit by a 10 foot wall of mud and was destroyed. I remember the day we were trying to cope with the devastation from the high winds and the trauma of living in hurricane force winds for 36 hours and somehow we heard the news that The Ranch House Barbecue was no more. We pass this little place on our way to Olympia and every time we’d drive by it, it was just a reminder of all we’d all gone through. This place is hugely popular and the owner has won awards all over the world.

Here is what it looked like after the mud hit it.

Words can’t even describe.

This picture was borrowed from here and the story was one of many.

Well, they did open up their business in downtown Olympia because of the generosity of The Governor Hotel, who offered them restaurant space…but we were really excited watching the re-building on their original location, so we waited. They re-opened last month.

‘

We had a great meal, which I forgot to take a picture of when the main dish came but here’s the salads…

We shared a plate of rib tips and barbecued chicken. I ordered garlic fries as one of the sides and my gosh, I brought home a box of them that is way more than I could eat for lunch.

Kenny had room left for pie and ice cream but I could do barely more than take a bite of his.

We had a nice quiet dinner. When Kenny went to pay, the waitress and I talked about how emotional the time was getting through it all and back to opening. I guess the 22 employees are all back to work there. Such a cool story of survival because their insurance didn’t cover it and they evidently were just outside the lines for help from FEMA. I believe people started donating money or something to get them open again. It’s just a heartwarming story.

We are listening to a book on my iPod together and when we pulled up in front of our house, Kenny looks at me and says, “Do you think we should have picked up Tyler from somewhere?” lol

We called Rhianna and she had him at the church and had planned on bringing him home for us anyway. That’s the problem of having so many of us especially when some of them work at the church.

Tags: my life

I have finally gotten some knitting pictures.

Here is a closeup of my scarf for ISE7. The color does not show right, it is a beautiful purple angora.

Pattern: Leafy Lace Scarf

Yarn: Louisa Harding Kimono Angora Pure

A few weeks ago, I knit one sock out of Regia Kaffe Fassett. I lost the other skein so this one is going to sit for awhile but I do like it.

I love the way it stripes.

Pattern: Thuja (modified with an eye-of-the-partridge heel)

Source: knitty.com

Needle size: 0 magic loop

I thought little missy needed some socks.

Of course the picture that was arranged better was blurry and I didn’t know it. The foot is now done so I’ll get a better picture later. This is also done on magic loop, but I am not thrilled with the method on a baby sock at all.

Lauri, I will take this off if you want me to but I thought it was so funny. Our friend Kelly moved to Alaska but every month when the knit night reminder goes out, she always responds to it with some joke about why she can’t make it. This time she told us to save her an empty chair and a latte cup. We wanted to prove to her that we did….. a cup and tears because we miss her. I even made her Flair on Facebook.

And that is all and off to bed I go.

Tags: my life

The other night, Tyler and I went to Rhianna’s for dinner because the boys were eating at the church. While Rhianna went to pick something up for us, I got to feed Mayah.

Hurry, Grammy, I like my bananas!

I really like it when Grammy gets silly!

Rhianna said it’s her ugliest bib. I think she’s adorable no matter what she wears.

We got to go on a double-date Saturday night with good friends. We had so much fun and I totally forgot to take out my camera. We plan to do this again later this month. It’s always fun to spend time with friends and we don’t do it enough!

I finally got my International Scarf Exchange scarf done. This swap was a little frustrating. Over halfway into the swap, I was reassigned who I was knitting for because my original partner never answered any emails. I think it’s possible I was given the girl my partner was supposed to get. I feel bad that she is expecting something from overseas and she lives a few hours from me. I ordered some yarn made in England and bought her a British magazine in hopes she doesn’t feel too left out. I also bought her chocolate covered cranberries since cranberries are grown here. I do hope she likes the scarf, I knit like crazy to get it done.

Here it is blocking.

I’ve been getting other knitting done but haven’t gotten pictures yet, hopefully tomorrow.

Today I got the nicest surprise. Kenny called me and said he was on his way home so I could get away for a few hours. He said I seemed kind of down-hearted and he wanted me to be able to get out. It was 3 pm and I was just getting ready for the day if you can believe it. I did get a cupboard cleaned, though. Anyway, how nice was that to get away like that? He’s the best.

I went to the river for awhile. I used to do this all the time when the kids were younger.

Tags: my life